I was a child of the television. Cartoons, Brady Bunch reruns, Family Feud (I so wanted to be on that show but the biggest thing holding me back – besides, you know, the rest of my family being on board – was creepy-ass Richard Dawson insisting on kissing all the females.), Tic Tak Dough, Smurfs, Snorks, Disney, Fraggle Rock, etc.
I was a child of video games. Duck Hunt on the Commodore 64, Defender and Pac-Man on the Atari, Super Mario on the SNES, Final Fantasy on the Game Boy.
While I grew up reading and writing, I was the sort of person who always had to have the television on, something in the background to keep me company. I hated silence. Music sometimes helped, but it wasn’t the TV.
So please understand that I am the person who will likely resist this the most – if you argue, then you have to know that I have already come up with those arguments before.
To be a prolific writer, you have to cut back on the media.
Yes. It sucks. A lot.
But when I was at WorldCon interviewing authors, one thing came through- the prolific ones either don’t have TVs or they simply regulate what they watch or play. If they have media in their lives, the writing comes first, the media is the reward.
I have to do this. I have to remove the media need from my life.
Step one started when the kiddo was born. We didn’t want a big TV influence in her baby years (Yeah, she’s downstairs watching Spongebob right now, what’s your point?) so for the first time, TV was not my constant companion. And I went a little mad, but boy did I read a lot. Step two was cancelling the World of Warcraft account. I picked it back up a whlie later, but it wasn’t the same. Warcraft is a lonely game for me because all my friends are childless and start before I can and play later than I can (And I get no fun out of random group adventuring). So no dungeons and raids for me. I soloed as a Hunter till I hit level 57 and then got bored. I quit WoW. (And I miss it like I still miss cigarettes.)
Step three happens today. We’re cutting off cable TV. Time Warner increases the rates faster than inflation, we don’t watch most of our channels, and DVDs, Netflix, and our console games are enough to keep us entertained. It also saves money (w00t). (Aside- boy, Time Warner hates it when you cancel cable. “We’ll lower your rates! You won’t be locked in! Why are you leaving? Is there anything we can do? Foot massage?”)
Once I deal with this addiction, I have another one to tackle, and it’s the biggie. The Internet. With the chat programs and facebook (my daughter delights when she catches me playing Robot Builder when I say I’m writing) and Wikipedia (I went to research Thor, I swear, I don’t know how I ended up on the Golden Girls episode guide) and email…. I can’t concentrate for more than 10 minutes. And the thing is, it’s not the net doing this. It’s me. People don’t ping me that often online (although I do wish people would respect the Do Not Disturb status more), it’s me going to look at email, facebook, twitter, my twitchy mind saying, “Anything new? Huh? How about now? Huh? Anything?”
But I write better when I can concentrate for more than a paragraph’s length, and media/Internet removal will help this. But it’s tough.
To beat an old cliche’ to death, when you’re on your deathbed are you going to look back and be happy that you watched those A-Team reruns, or wrote 23 novels in your lifetime?
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I’ve managed to work almost all TV out of my schedule – I only watch a total of five seasonal programmes throughout the year. The problem is video games – they take up a lot of my time. Not (just) because I’m a geek, but because I’m a games journalist, so i feel compelled to play the latest titles in order to inform my work. Plus, when you’re writing an average of 3000-5000 words a day, it’s more appealing (read: easier) to just turn on a game, rather than booting up the PC and writing more.
I know I’m just making excuses. Sorry.
Hallelujah.
I’m actually considering how this might be accomplished. My new router has software that can cut off internet access on particular machines at particular times. It’s intended for control of children’s access (and believe me, Spinderfly and Nitrolad are NOT happy with this) but I can definitely see the bonus for people like us.
This is a constant problem I deal with. So far I’ve not done very well in the fight
ME
Wow. I know what you mean.
I already got TV out of my life. Internet is the big addiction, though. I swear I sit there all day refreshing twitter and livejournal if I can.
… I was about to say we should all break our internet addictions together. but that would require the internet.
Damn. Internet = Crack.
Wow, great post, and one that I think is very important. I feel quite strongly about this topic (eg, turn off the TV, quit hitting refresh on Facebook every twenty seconds, etc), because, as you noted from your WorldCon experience, the more prolific the writer, the more they write. And while that sounds obvious and even circular, you’ve hit it right on the head – you need to cut out media.
I wrote something similar a while ago about how writing should be the only thing you do (which I’ve linked at the top there). While you shouldn’t be obsessive-compulsive about it, you do need to develop a certain monomania about writing.
To cut to the chase: writing has to be the number one priority. Everyone has chores to do, family commitments, etc. Some people have kids to raise. All good. But after that, what’s the most important thing in your life? For us, it’s writing, which means writing is what we do.
You can even extend it out to other successful people. Take any entrepreneurial individual who actually made it. Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, etc. One thing that sets them apart from everyone else is that monomania for their passion. Richard Branson gets up at 4am seven days a week starts work. When Steve Job was on sick leave from Apple this year, his second-in-command Tim Cook (who took over the day-to-day running of the business) started each working week at 4.30am on a Sunday with an executive board conference call.
Those are extreme examples, but good ones I think. To succeed at anything, writing included, you have to work as hard as you can on it.
And that old cliche at the end there is absolutely correct, whether’s its A-Team reruns, or 25-man hard mode Ulduar in World of Warcraft.
What has surprised me is the reaction from friends. They ask what I did at the weekend, I said I was mostly writing, they ask about TV, I said I didn’t watch any. What do you mean, you didn’t watch any? What about the news, current events? Nope, sorry, I was busy writing!
Adam
If you use Firefox, Leechblock can be enormously helpful. You can set it for no web access between 9am and noon, or for 5 minutes an hour during the work day, or to allow access to your webmail but no other sites.
I find myself with the attention span of a brain-addled hamster, and turning off the internet helps, after a while. The detox process is long and painful, at least for me.
I have the same problem. Scrivener helps (I love the full screen option), but there are times when even that isn’t enough. What I’ve found works for me, is that I work on a Mac laptop with a wiFi connection. So there’s a little icon at the upper right hand corner that allows me to turn off the wifi. It’s hard, but once I do I get so much more done.
I totally agree, Mur. Like Elizabeth R, I think the full screen option on Scrivener is great, and I cancelled Sky TV here in England a few months back. We still get FreeSat and Freeview, but its so much better without all that constant distraction.
Now, if only I can cure my addiction to writing blogs…
Sam Delaney, in his book “About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, and Five Interviews,” talks about how a writer learns to write by reading.
If nothing else, even if you turn off the TV and relax by picking up a novel, it exposes you to examples of the very medium you’re working in.
Well…
I am very fortunate in this regard. My early years of prolific writing took place on a US Navy ship. There WAS no privacy or do not disturb. I wrote in groups, gangs, with a radio on one side and a TV on the other, and I never lost the knack. I can write and watch TV between the cracks, take Social Media breaks, and still put together plenty of output…I’m a creature of my environment, and it was and is an odd one…
DNW
[...] no excuse to not write! I read two great blog posts about this recently. The first one is from Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing blog and the other is from Adam Christopher’s blog. Check them out and prepare to feel like a [...]
I don’t mind using the computer to type and flesh stuff out primarily for one reason… Google. It’s helped fill in the gaps when I’ve been looking for definitions and references, and it’s a lot faster to switch applications than to pull out the dictionaries, magazines and calling up people asking “hey, you remember that time when we…?” I’m sure once I get more draft work done and get into re-writing it all to read more smoothly and flesh things out I won’t need the reference material but for now it’s a blessing.
having done just about everything in my mmos helps… I don’t feel the need to play them so much anymore, but man, the hours, days, and months of life already wasted…